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Comment by doomlaser | Hacker News Reader

As a huge fan of 2001, “somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring” is a totally valid critique of the movie.

Its contemporaneous success at the time was tied to the rise of the late 1960s counterculture, which was somewhat of a lucky break.

As an asde, I've always loved the rotation-match space docking sequence: https://twitter.com/Doomlaser/status/981172150001373184 — that is the kind of engineering choreography that SpaceX's recent synchronized double rocket landing reminded me of.

And one of my early creative career highlights was convincing everyone at Tapulous to give me the go ahead to do a 7 and a half minute tribute to the 2001 stargate sequence as the final boss in Tap Tap Dance, set to Phantom Pt. II by Justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-JLnyHT7IU#t=26s

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Someone linked us last week to an essay that said that docking scene is spellbinding, but not if you’re watching it on a laptop/phone in a well lit place. In a dark theater the scale feels different.

I was fortunate enough to watch 2001 on a huge screen, at night, at the bottom of the Thompson dry-dock in Belfast ( in which the Titantic was constructed ). It was indeed an utterly different film when surrounded by enormous cold darkness.

It would have been interesting to have had the 'dialogue scenes' projected onto a smaller section of the screen and then expand out for the space scenes.

I think he held that reverse zoom on the landing bay too long, but nobody's perfect.

like the French, with their little enameled fly in the white of the urinal, in the movie theater you would not notice, watching the small Pan-Am aircraft rolling as it approached. Passengers would not feel the roll and be thanking the baby Elvis.

Both Justice and Stanley Kubrick are two of the largest influences in my life. Loving seeing this as the top comment on a front page article about Kubrick.

Gotta work Doug Trumbull into that list — he directed the effects for 2001, Blade Runner, and more, https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=HHjLsvEOeS0 and he's still around!

(Thanks!)

As to that particular project with Justice, it almost fell through because we were on a tight deadline to get the game out in time for the 2008 holiday season. We were working 18 hour days (or more) on the thing, and my best friend and collaborator surprised me on the morning of my 25th birthday in November with this Quartz Composer test visualization of what we wanted to do: https://vimeo.com/129257159 — I immediately sent it along to the office, and the CEO called me up and wished me a happy birthday. They were all floored, and he excitedly gave me the go ahead on the proposal.

Nice! You and Justice rock!

>As an asde, I've always loved the rotation-match space docking sequence

Same here, seeing it also gives an urge to play Elite again.

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